Benjamin Britten, as a boy lover, will need little introduction to many heretics here, especially after a new biography in this centennial year of the great composer’s birth, and all the other razzmatazz that attends celebrity.

So is there anything more to be said about him, as the year draws to its close? There’s the usual exclusion principle to note, of course, which makes it impossible to be simultaneously both an esteemed figure and a paedophile, or not an active one at least. Britten still just about makes the cut in this regard: his hebephilic, rather than truly paedophilic, preference for barely pubescent boys was always highly visible, but he was never metaphorically caught with his pants down (or theirs) even though he hugged them, kissed them on the lips, declared his love, swam naked in their company and even – shades of Michael Jackson – shared his bed with them.

No doubt he has been cut some slack because some of his most important works, especially the operas Peter Grimes, The Turn of the Screw and Death in Venice, all strongly feature the theme of childhood innocence and appear to abhor its “corruption”. In this, too, his career is strongly reminiscent of Jackson’s. The pop megastar was a very different musician and personality but both artists surrounded themselves constantly with children, especially boys, who were featured extensively in their work. Both took boys to bed with them and both insisted – or had others insist for them – that it was all entirely “pure”, and they were protective, not predatory. The comparison is at times uncannily close: Here’s Michael’s little friend Brett Barnes: “I was on one side and he was on the other, and it’s a big bed.” And Ben’s beloved David Hemmings: “It was a very big bed.” Or what about the first time Michael slept with young Jordie Chandler? They had been watching a video of The Exorcist and the boy said been so frightened he had not wanted to sleep alone. Hemmings again: “I have slept in his bed, yes, only because I was scared at night…” No videos in those days: he had been scared, so it was claimed, by the crashing of waves on the seashore near Ben’s house!

Unlike Chandler, though, who very credibly testified that his relationship with Jackson became overtly sexual, Hemmings, who was decidedly not an innocent child, always protected Ben’s reputation. Young David, who played the role of the “corrupted” boy Miles in The Turn of the Screw, later went on record saying he flirted with Ben. A sexual advance would not have shocked him as he had already been sexually involved with a couple of boys and began a long heterosexual career as early as age seven, when he was getting his hands in naughty places with little girls – something it would be ill-advised for even a child to confess these days! But Ben, if we are to believe Hemmings, kept himself on a tight rein, so nothing illegal happened between them.

Britten’s close, but possibly unconsummated, relationships with many boys has long been uncontested, following Humphrey Carpenter’s candid biography in 1992 and John Bridcut’s even more comprehensively revealing one in 2007, Britten’s Children. The new biography by Paul Kildea, Benjamin Britten: A Life in the Twentieth Century, adds little to the story of his sexuality except a sensational and almost certainly false claim that the maestro contracted syphilis, probably from his long-term adult partner, the singer Peter Pears. This claim “fell apart within about four days”, according to reviewer Philip Hensher, when a doctor who cared for Britten in his final illness went public to say that the diagnosis “does not fit with everything else … there is no serological, bacteriological, pathological or histological support for the diagnosis.”

The pox, mercifully, need not detain us, but Pears should. Bridcut writes that 13-year-old boys were Britten’s ideal, but he apparently also gained some sort of sexual satisfaction from his relationship with Pears, who was less complicatedly gay, having no apparent interest in youngsters. According to Carpenter, Pears described Britten as more masculine than himself in every way, except in bed, where the composer preferred the passive role. The biographer’s informant was John Evans, who later edited Britten’s letters, for a volume that would appear in 2009. After Britten’s death, Pears confided to Evans that Britten had “needed the active figure (Peter) to his passive, but he also needed to be active to a boy’s passive. And I’ve always had the impression that Peter meant that both types of relationship had been consummated – which left me absolutely thunderstruck.”

As well it might! One possibility that appears to have been overlooked by all the biographers is that Britten’s inhibitions, fostered in the cultural and climatic frigidity of his native England, might have melted quickly away in sunnier and sexually hotter spots abroad, as has happened to many a frustrated Brit. He spent a lot of time in the East, touring in, notably, India, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand and Ceylon. He wrote of seeing “the most beautiful people, of a lovely dark brown colour…wearing strange clothes, and sometimes wearing nothing at all.” He even notes that he became accustomed to boys “attaching” themselves to him.

Be that as it may, the revelation that Britten appears to have experienced two distinct sorts of homosexual attraction, passive in relation to the adult Pears, and active (psychologically at least) towards young boys, is surely worthy of thought and comment, especially as regards the current “politically correct” claim that gay men are no more likely to “molest” underage boys than straight men are likely to “molest” underage girls. It depends how you define “gay”, of course: the term tends to be used to describe adolescents who are attracted to physically mature males, but less often the other way around, when the preferred words usually change to “hebephile”, “paedophile” or just “child molester”. The language has now largely abandoned the older words “pederasty” and “sodomy” (no great loss in the latter case), which in the days of Oscar Wilde a century ago were applied almost indiscriminately to man-man contacts and man-boy ones.

What Britten’s case exposes is the falsity of the new language, which obscures an extensive “cross-over” phenomenon: “gay” men, such as he undoubtedly was, do sometimes like boys. In fact, whether we call it “gay” or not, men show a disproportionately higher homosexual interest in children than heterosexual. Research suggests that about a third of male paedophiles prefer boys, about a third prefer girls, and a third are attracted to both. The one third preferring boys is a very high figure given that only about 5% of all men in society are preferentially homosexual. Consider, too, Ray Blanchard’s experimental work: he has demonstrated that men typically have a significant degree of sexual response to their second age category preferences as well as their first: the erectile response of teleiophilic men (i.e. “gay” ones, preferentially attracted to adult males) to erotic images of pubescent boys is on average well over 60% of their response to such images of grown men. A key implication is that the gay men who loudly insist there is no connection whatever between gayness and boy love are making a politically expedient but factually flawed claim.

Enough with the technical stuff already! Let’s get back to Britten in this festive season (for which Heretic TOC wishes all readers well!) with a rousing operatic finale. Admittedly his opera Death in Venice is not that cheerful, but if his librettist Myfanwy Piper had had her way it would surely have cheered us up. The opera features child dancers taking part in “the Games of Apollo”. Bearing in mind that these children were meant to represent athletes, she suggested they should be attired just like the competitors in the games of Ancient Greece, which had inspired the theme – in other words, naked! Britten loved the idea but turned it down because, in Bridcut’s words, it might have attracted “unwelcome publicity”. One suspects that these days, alas, he would have more to worry about than sniggering reviewers!

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How could I have forgotten? I actually knew someone like this. We were good friends in the first couple of years at university; we’ve lost touch, sadly, but I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t mind having his story told here, in fairly general terms — he was a very open, friendly, social person, still is I’m sure. Well, my friend was exclusively homosexual. He was attracted to men, including beefy, muscular, lantern-jawed men in their thirties, but he’d freely admit, though with a bit of a guilty grin, that he was also attracted to boys as young as twelve, even ten. He had various feminine mannerisms; he had a few male friends from childhood, but made friends most easily with women, and liked to do things with them such as gossiping and dancing to pop music; he had a very close relationship with his father; he was interested in science fiction, choral singing, psychology, physics, chemistry and cars. So, not someone who could be neatly slotted into any stereotype, but he did most closely fit the mould of a somewhat girly gay guy. And yet he liked boys. At university he became involved for the first time in a social group of other gay men and had a couple of boyfriends his own age, and his attraction to boys, though still present, faded into the background of his thoughts: what really mattered, after all, was his actual sex life, which was with grown men.

A note on Britten/Jackson: Bridcut mentions in a footnote that Britten had a statue of a prepubescent boy in his garden and a “photographic study” of prepubescent boyhood on his bookshelves. Could the phrase possibly suggest that it was ‘The Boy: A Photographic Essay’? It was published in 1964 and Britten died in 1976…

One aspect of ‘Britten’s Children’ which nobody has mentioned is the deep affection which those thirteen-year-old boys showed in writing to Britten — “My darling Ben, it was wonderful to hear your voice on the phone, xoxoxoxoxo” kind of thing, from young Roger Duncan, for instance. For him, Duncan explains, it was not a sexual thing, but it was indeed love. The policing of relationships between adults and children has, arguably, severely restricted an area where young boys could express deep feeling, something they are culturally discouraged from doing.

Poor Britten, he had no luck — fourteen-year-old Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy, for instance, was “at once aware that I attracted him” and “could not help flirting slightly” but though Britten waited to make a pass until Gathorne-Hardy was eighteen, Gathorne-Hardy turned him down even then.

I’m not convinced that the split between Britten’s attraction to Pears and to boys was completely binary. In ‘Britten’s Children’, Bridcut includes a lot of material about a twenty-four-year-old Britten’s chaste but passionate fling with seventeen-year-old Wulff Scherchen. They had first met when Scherchen was thirteen, but by the time they met again, Scherchen was a strapping lad, taller than Britten, and Britten nonetheless fell hard.

Britten apparently had a habit of cutting off his friendships with boys rather suddenly, which hurt some of them. On this note, there’s a novel called ‘The Lantern Bearers’ by Ronald Frame, in which a fourteen-year-old gay boy sings for a famous composer who lives with another man, and becomes angry and vengeful when he’s abruptly dismissed upon the breaking of his voice. I suspect that the composer in the book is based on Britten.

I’m not convinced that the split between Britten’s attraction to Pears and to boys was completely binary.

Me neither. But what would have been Britten’s preferred sexual response if the relationship with Wulff Scherchen had been consummated? Passive, as with Pears, or active, as Pears hinted Britten was with boys? This really is a binary decision, unless the deed is to be done both actively and passively at any age.

Well, clearly he felt like the man to Scherchen’s boy — “a mixture of the erotic and the paternal”, Bridcut says, I think. I’ve never had much time for active and passive ‘roles’ myself but clearly some people get a lot out of them, and I suspect that in those days, the idea of them had a stronger cultural grip. Auden subscribed: he wrote somewhere that male homosexuals can be divided into those who play husbands and wives (anal sex) and those who play mothers and sons (oral sex) — though even he did allow for a third category, those who prefer ‘brotherly’ activities such as mutual masturbation. Auden’s an interesting ‘case’, anyway — he seems mostly to have preferred guys in their late teens through their middle twenties, but one of his great loves and lifelong friends was Michael Yates, whom he fell for when he was a schoolteacher of twenty-six and Yates, his pupil, was thirteen.

Last year in the pages of the Guardian (where else?) Martin Kettle wrote a rambling, hand-wringing piece based loosely on “Britten’s Children” fretting that BB might have been a paedophile. The piece was thoroughly depressing and I won’t link to it, but it provoked this rather moving response from John Bridcut himself:

The Guardian, Sunday 25 November 2012 21.00 GMT

“No one in my experience is trying to cover up awkward aspects of Benjamin Britten’s life (Comment, 22 November). Indeed 10 years ago the Britten Pears Foundation encouraged me to explore his friendships with boys for my book Britten’s Children, and made its whole archive available for the purpose. The eyes of these boys (now middle-aged or elderly men) lit up at the remembered richness of these friendships, and there was no suggestion of impropriety. As the actor David Hemmings put it, “he was not only a father to me, but a friend – and you couldn’t have had a better father, or a better friend. I loved him dearly, I really did – I absolutely adored him”.

It is really up to the public whether they wish the current censorious hysteria to infect the forthcoming centenary celebrations of the finest opera composer of his, and every subsequent, generation. Sexual impulses are often at the root of the greatest works of art. But if we condemn people simply for what we imagine they may have thought, we will indeed end up in a moral, intellectual and cultural wasteland.”

I just want to use this post as a pretext to add a link to one of my favourite pieces of Christmas music arranged by Britten – sung by the boys of the very best male choir in the world (in my not-especially-humble opinion) and with a soloist – the marvelous Edward Burrowes – who haunts my fevered dreams anights. I think this is rather sublime, and I suspect Benjy would have felt similarly, the lovely old pervert that he was.

[TOC adds: Adding this link using WordPress software automatically adds an associated image, which contravenes H TOC’s no-image policy. However, I think this is one of those rare cases where an an exception is called for.]

I agree entirely about Connor Burrowes – and I have recently discovered that there was a third Burrowes brother, Patrick, who was also a chorister at St Paul’s. There are some recordings of him online, but I won’t further test the iconoclastic policy of this blog by trying to post them. True enthusiasts will be able to find them for themselves!

A. & All,
This discussion has sent me on a quest around the web for boy choirs and soloists. One of the most pleasant finds was David Lowe teaching Masters Classes to a Danish Choristers (Herning Boys Choir) from 11 to 23. He was so good with them. It was funny when he told a 14-year-old who he was teaching how to work with his voice changing that he now had more to work with than he did a year ago.

The boys paid intense attention to him. Reminded me of how I was with my flying instructor when I was 16. Had to really learn that stuff. Airplanes can kill you. What a kind instructor I had. Much like David Lowe. Much like Benjamin Britten. When I am in our hometown I always visit his grave. One year I put my flying goggles that were really my motorcycle (Red Barron) goggles on his head stone. We love the men who loved us when we were kids. No wonder the boys now men in “Britten’s Children” expressed such love for him.
Linca

Yes Jim,
Word devils do roam the earth. We are in danger all the time aren’t we? Even Britten. Google “The Scallop at Aldeburgh Beach” and you will see he is still under attack not for pedophilia but just being on the beach via his memorial.

I love those words the artist put on the “Scallop”. Don’t you?
“I HEAR THOSE VOICES THAT WILL NOT BE DROWNED”
Nice to look at huh?
Linca

I imagine that how exactly the dancing is to be done is a new decision to be made for each fresh production of the opera of ‘Death in Venice’. It is certainly true (and unfortunate in my view) that Tadzio tends most often to be portrayed as an older lad. But in the one stage production that I saw (Royal Opera House 1992) he was played by a very fetching and quite small Italian lad. (I don’t remember his name and my program is filed away somewhere and so I can’t check it at the moment.) He got a roar of applause at his curtain call! I myself left the opera house elated. Yes, it’s true that D of V isn’t exactly a bundle of laughs, but I think of the ending as a kind of redemption, a long and beautiful reward for the sometimes anguished events that precede it.

[TOC adds: Sorry for late approval of this post, which is dated Christmas Eve: I must have overlooked it.]

Thank you Tom,
For making us aware of this new book about Britten: “Benjamin Britten: A Life in the Twentieth Century”. I have put it on my buy list. Waiting till it comes available on Kindle over here in the States.

In one of the Amazon reviews it was recommended that a person should read Humphrey Carpenter’s “Benjamin Britten: A Biography” first.

Feel like I need to know more about him to better understand his operas I have on video. Not disappointed at all that Tadzio is older but disappointed the children were not as they were proposed to be. Had no idea that was a possibility.

God we are crazy people pushing with all our might against nature with unproven beliefs like those who pollute our air and water for financial gain.
Linca

Wanted to just speak up on one thing that popped out at me as i skimmed your post: The one about how i think we’ve uncritically (or at least maybe too much have accepted) subordinating how we speak to the way in which we’ve been attacked…Am i making sense to anyone here? Basically, i want to say that i think we should not always reduce ourselves down to the imposed idea of “sex”, as tho our intuitive, organic care is and can only ever be “about sex”! Of course, many of you are old hands at this, so i may be “jumping the gun” so to speak. i just think it’s a good idea to regularly speak in the language we may prefer; well, at least for my poetic tastes and feeling!

Yes Chuck,
The ones who repress us with their unproven beliefs co-opt our words and even our thoughts. It has taken me a long time in discussions with my friend an evolutionary psychologist to realize how unproven the beliefs of our enemies are.

The force of the unproven believers (Our Enemies) is so strong I would probably cringe at the openness of your poetry. That would be wrong. Since I cannot hear your poetry I will imagine it. After the shock — BEAUTY.

Linca, i often cannot help but to cringe as well, from my own writings of years past, knowing how much intensity the warring will likely throw upon me…whenever they feel like it, or whatever other miserable projection they Have To throw. Especially when i realize that i may well have to walk in alone in defending myself. But, alas, it is a spiritual path, all of this life! And whatever is thrown at us is something that those who inspire me say is never about something we cannot handle, and may even ultimately benefit from (i.e. in future lives). Thanks for speaking up!

Read “The Real Tadzio” by Gilbert Adaire (who also wrote “Love and Death on Long Island”) for Mann’s perspective on the boy in the sailor suit, and how Visconti changed that to fit the 1971 role to accommodate Bjorn Andressen.

In his novel, Mann portrayed Tadzio as an androgynous and vulnerable 14 year old boy. Given the lowering of the age of puberty through the years, this would make him pubescent at most. The real Tadzio was 11. The original story was not about a man who discovered his (now acceptable) homosexual attraction to an 18 year old. It was a story about intergenerational love. This fact is glossed over in all the movie and operatic adaptations of the novella I am aware of. I am not sure what Britten intended, but I am sure he would have wanted to portray Tadzio in the same light as Mann’s novella. It would seem that even in art we cannot explore the issue of intergenerational love. I don’t blame directors like Visconti, who produced a very fine film. How far could he afford to go? But the story in the movie was radically changed from the novella by his portraying Tadzio as a much older adolescent or young man.

But the story in the movie was radically changed from the novella by his portraying Tadzio as a much older adolescent or young man.

Yes, I felt let down by the movie for this reason. I have never seen Britten’s opera. Perhaps it’s as well, because I would certainly have been disappointed judging by the following comment in Bridcut’s book:

Britten’s decision to make Tadzio a dancer rather than a singer means, almost inevitably, that the stage character is well developed physically, and probably in his late teens. This risks changing the intended dynamic of the story, so that Aschenbach falls in love with a young man, rather than with a boy on the cusp of adolescence.

I’m not sure why a dancer needs to be physically mature, though. Perhaps it depends on what kind of dancing is required. When I saw George Maguire as a fairly small, very boyish, 14-year-old in the title role of the musical Billy Elliot, his very athletic dancing was fantastic at that age. He was one of three boys in the role at that time, in 2005, the others being Liam Mower and James Lomas, who I gather were also superb. Likewise Jamie Bell in the earlier film version. They all appeared to be no more than 12-13.